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112415-Time Served
CSO: You hear someone knock on the door. CCC: "Come in." He calls out. It's actually quiet and defeated sounding. CSO: Libby slips into the room, and the door shuts behind her. She tilts her head in confusion. "Where's Aaisha?" CCC: "Gone." CSO: "Did you negotiate with Glissa then" CCC: "No, only endured my punishment" He looks at the floor. CSO: "What?" Libby seems confused, then her brow furrows and she starts yelling. "YOU SLEPT WITH HER? GODOS DO YOU THINK ONLY WITH YOUR BULGE?" CCC: "You say that like what I did doesn't sicken me." CSO: "Do you think about... ANYTHING?" CSO: "You had the chance to save Aaisha from her torment! And you didn't. You slept with her! Are you so weak that you couldn't resist an easy lay? Or was it that you were too selfish and couldn't handle seeing her suffer?" CCC: "You're the one who told me not to negotiate. To leave her. I tried to plead with her, but it was no use. She was gone." CSO: "I told you not to negotiate. Not to send her away. Are you incapable of thinking outside the box?" CCC: "Was I supposed to know whatever the fuck you had planned?" CCC: "Was I supposed to know you had some ulterior motive?" CCC: "Besides, it wasn't her. It can't have been her for a long time." CCC: "She was just a shell" CSO: "I didn't plan anything, Nyarla. And regardless of if this was 'her'," Libby makes quote fingers. "So long as you refused to sleep with her, she'd have stayed here. No more torment." CCC: He throws his hands up to his horns, making as if to rip them off, but they don't budge. "FUCK!" CSO: "GodOS. It really didn't occur to you, did it?" CCC: "No, no it didn't. Besides, I was told that I had to or else she'd be returned to the other Aaisha." CSO: Libby looks pale, and she seems to slide down. A chair springs into existence underneath her. "Oh you precious idiot. Glissa would have kept her here, toying with you. But she would have kept her here. And let me guess, Glissa told you nothing of what she's going to do after you finished with Aaisha?" CCC: "Of course not." CSO: "And you didn't ask." CCC: He pales too, "I'm in idiot and a fuck up. How am I supposed to have any measure of composure when faced with that?" CCC: "I could only think on what she'd been through out here. What I put her through." CSO: "If you're going to be an even remotely successful time player, you have to think in a non-linear manner." CSO: "So, let's start with a simple excercise. What is Glissa going to do now?" CCC: "Continue selling my matesprit's nook to the Outer Gods." CSO: "That's easy. That's what you expect. But Glissa has it out for you. How can she hurt YOU the most?" CCC: "...take the other Aaisha." CSO: "No, that's also easy. And pointless. Then she has two Aaishas to Manage." CCC: "The next most painful would be to put her back." CSO: "Right. Because taking the waking Aaisha, you don't have to see it. But making the waking Aaisha know what you just did, how you could have saved her, and what THEY did to her for what seems to be thousands of sweeps, because don't forget Glissa's all about Time, that will take her away from you just as painfully." CCC: "And now she gets to know how I caved. How I broke. How I gave in just to get her out of my sight." CCC: "Are there any other bombs for you to drop?" CSO: "How you could have saved her, but your weakness made you given in, and sacrifice her to suffering to save yourself." CCC: "It wasn't to save myself. I'd thought I was saving her. At least one of her." CCC: "I figured those memories were the biggest threat. So I did what I could to prevent them. I hadn't thought that I'd only be adding another." CCC: "Making it so so much worse" CSO: "This is what I mean about thinking, Nyarla." CCC: "How was I supposed to know that a horror terror would be bullshitting me on that? That she'd leave Aaisha here and wait patiently?"" CCC: "And having to live knowing this now is the greatest punishment" CSO: "This has to do with your understanding of time." CSO: "How much time do you have until Aaisha wakes up?" CCC: "As long as I can stretch it out." CCC: "Does she wake up right now? Or never? Should I be trying to sense it?" CSO: "No, I'm glad you got that. You have as much, or as little, time as you want." CCC: "I don't know shit about time except it's it's similar to space. Only linear when excluding alternate timelines. Based on Perception. Etcetera. I'd have asked my sprite, but she's compromised by Jack. All I 'actually know' is what I've already done." CCC: "Which is buy time. CCC: " CSO: Libby leans her head against the wall. "Imagine you have a graph. Okay? You got that?" CCC: "Yeah?" CSO: "Okay, now you have a line. That line is ALWAYS the same length, and both ends must ALWAYS touch the X and Y axis. Do you have that?" CCC: "And I can poke it and prod it and shape the line whichever way that I want?" CCC: "If not, then what's the point? If time will just run it's course." CSO: "The line is always straight. BUT the speed with which you move through space is the X Axis, and the Y axis is the speed through which you move through time." CCC: He sighs. "Yes, I've got the line." CCC: "Wait...What?" CSO: "So, the faster you mobe through space, the slower you move through time. Understand?" CCC: "...yeah, I still follow." CSO: "Congratulations, that's Troll Einsteins Theory of Relativity in a nutshell." CSO: "Now, think about it outside the box. You are a Time player. You cannot control the speed with which you move through space. But you can control the speed with which you move through time." CSO: "If you move yourself very slowly through Time, you move at amazing speeds. You can literally walk from one planet to another in a heartbeat. To everyone else though, it looks like..." She moves her hand, waiting for his response. CCC: "Like appearing out of thin air." CSO: "And that's how Jack Teleports. And how you will." CCC: "Yeah, Speed equals distance over time" CCC: "Sorry to seem impulsive, but how does this help? Should I slow time to walk to Heliux's planet to console her?" CSO: "Now invert that. How do you travel through time?" CCC: "Backwards?" CSO: "You can't do it yet. You don't have the power. But soon." CCC: "How soon? Can I slow time to a crawl until I learn?" CSO: "No. You'll kill yourself. And they will go mad." CCC: "Well the science lesson was fun, but what can I do aside from delay the inevitable?" CSO: "There is nothing you can do to stop Aaisha from getting those memories. Except strike a bargain. But what you can do, is lie." CCC: "I'm not really a great liar." CSO: "As a Time Player, you have to learn. You will know the future. Will you tell your friends about their deaths?" CCC: "No." CCC: "I can refuse to say things, but actively lying, I'm pretty shitty at." CCC: "And I don't know that I can do that here." CSO: "You'll have to learn. Think of how much information you all demanded of me, and I was an alien being. You are their friend, their lover, their Mage of Time." CCC: "You've done more for them than I have. Than I can." CSO: "They won't believe that." CCC: "So after what I've done, I should just look Aaisha in the face and say that I didn't? That I'm innocent?" CSO: "No. Lie about your motivations. Tell her you figured it out. What Glissa would do, that she'd get her dreamself back. And that you wanted to make sure she'd have that second life." CCC: "So I cover my cowardice with more cowardice, gotcha. At least her getting the life back is good." CCC: "Ironic that two very extreme wrongs are actually making a right." CSO: "Well, it's your choice. I'm just advising. Aaisha will need as much morale as possible in the coming days." CCC: "I'll do it. I need her to be strong, I need morale of my own." CSO: Libby presses her fingers to her head. "You need to learn, Nyarla." CSO: "you need to learn so much." CCC: "So much for a proper schoolfeeding." CSO: "Hilariously, you don't have time." CCC: "Ha ha" CCC: "Let's pray my personal dark clouds don't shred the next silver lining." CSO: Libby shrugs, and sits in silence for a moment. CCC: "...you said Glissa was terrified of Jack before, right?" CCC: "Can I do that? Make her fear?" CSO: "Yes. You have to work hard to get powerful enough to do that." CCC: "Alright." He too, settled into silence. CSO: After a few minutes of quiet, you notice tears leaking out of the bottom of Libby's bandages. CCC: The blank expression he'd been wearing faded into concern. "..What's the matter?" CSO: "Before, when you... When you said you weren't going to let me go, and you were going to keep me." CCC: "I'm so so sorry about that. It probably doesn't mean much, but I faltered for a moment during that. I almost couldn't bear the thought of 'keeping' you like that." CCC: "Owning someone else never sat right with me. I was delusional and thought I was doing what was best" CSO: Libby stands up, and leans on the door frame. The door opens accomodatingly for her. "I was crying because I wanted you to actually mean it, but I could see how you really felt about me." She slips out, and the door closes. CCC: "Wait!" CCC: He just sighs. "Didn't even get to finish." CSO: The door opens again. "What?" CSO: She's digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands. CCC: "Oh! Well, I did mean it on some level." CSO: "Is that supposed to comfort me?" CCC: "I've been pretty fond of you for a while, just that I didn't want to stand in Serios' way." CCC: "Or be unfaithful to Aaisha." CSO: "Pfft. Fond." CSO: "Do you need something? Or can I return to Serios and forget?" CCC: "It's only my word choice, I have flushed feelings for you, though now isn't the time to dig into them." CSO: "There will never be a time, Nyarla. You love Aaisha, and I love Serios. There was one... glittering moment, when you had a chance. But we are both bound by our roles in this cosmic game. Nyarla, the White Knight, and Libby, the Black Bishop." CCC: "That video comes to mind a lot. That timeline where we were together and seemed to have a happy ending." CSO: She slips back in, and leans on the wall. "We were happy, you know. So happy." CCC: "I believe it. Kind of jealous of that version of myself honestly." CCC: "He won, helped jump start reproduction, and probably did the white knight thing a lot better than I will." CCC: "I still need to learn and he likely had you to teach him." CSO: She laughs, and a blush creeps across her cheeks. "You would wake me up every morning with.. the stupidest things. You'd make these little paper boats out of love notes you wrote me, and float them on the water of my tank. O CSO: I'd wake up every morning to a see of little paper boats just above my head." CCC: He laughs at that. "I have noticed I can be almost sickeningly sweet. That definitely sounds like me." CCC: "Anything other special things that I'd do for you?" CCC: "I mean, did do for you." He blushes a bit CCC: "or do I" he mutters as low as he can. CSO: She giggles and nods. "You used to make jokes about being my Igor in the lab, terrible accents and dragging yourself around so your horns dragged on the ground. You always knew how to make me laugh. How to make me forget." Her smile dies, and she shakes her head. Her voice becomes much more serious. "But that is not for us." CCC: His smile falls. "Yeah, we needn't reminisce on what waspn't." CCC: He seems to go into thought for a moment. "Can you tell me what the chance wasp that missed? I'm curious." CCC: "That glittering moment." CSO: She walks across the room to where Nyarla is. "At the beginning, when I was flushed for you." She reaches up, and lays her hand on his cheek. It's cool, and she smells slightly of apricots. "You could have avoided all of this. We both could have." CCC: He smiles and lays his hand over hers. "Sounds like a much happier timeline. I may not be him, but I am inspired by him. That me did things right, maybe I can too." CSO: Libby stands up on her tiptoes, and brushes her lips gently against Nyarla's. CSO: "I'm going to go now." CCC: He may or may not have leaned into it a bit, his faced fully blue. "Hehe, buzz, yeah." CCC: "Um..thanks.' CCC: "For the time lesson." CCC: "And the advice." CSO: She lingers a few more moments, before pulling herself away, and heading for the door. CCC: "And everything else.' CCC: "Everything." CSO: "It's my job to get you through this, even if I have to carry the whole session on my back." She sounds so very tired. CCC: "I'll help as much as I can. I'm a white knight, after all." CCC: "We should talk about happier times more often." CSO: She places her hand on the door frame. "No, we shouldn't. Not if we want to remain faithful to our respective partners." CCC: "No, I mean, peptalks don't mean much, but thinking on progress does. Even if it's another version of me. It helped me, I'm not in the best place mentally." CCC: "Also, Aaisha did once say she wasp unopposed to the idea." He's suddenly very focused somewhere that's not on her. CSO: "But every time I think about that, I compare it to my life with Serios. I love him, dearly, but with Serios, I am the Oracle. With you..." She shakes her head. "With you I was Libby." CSO: She laughs at the suggestion. "Good night, Nyarla." CCC: "Good night." CSO: She leaves, and the door closes behind her. CCC: He smiles as she leaves, getting himself ready for sleep and the day rapidly approaching him. Category:Libby Category:Nyarla